Ever since I read "Sing for Your Supper" I have kept an eye out for anything by its author … because she writes about the West, old or contemporary, with a juicy vitality needed in stories about it. For "Westerns" tend to become stereotyped: her stories, for young people growing up, stay within the frame of this fiction, but make it seem as if it really happened.

Thus the bookful of short stories ["Riding High" has] basic elements one expects from ranches in fiction [a sweet young girl, a devoted foster-parent, a bow-legged cowboy confidant, and a young hero].

There is, incidentally, a good deal about habits and education of ranch horses…. If grown-up Westerns had as much in them, I might be able to read the things. (p. 7)